Candidate: Radi Abubaker
Title: Relay Attack Detection Utilizing the Wireless Communication Channel
Date: June 12, 2024
Time: 11:00 AM
Place: EIT 3145
Supervisor(s): Gong, Guang
Abstract:
Decode-and-forward and amplify-and-forward relay attacks are a powerful tool for defeating challenge-response authentication protocols. Current solutions for detecting these relay attacks utilize round-trip time distance-bounding. Unfortunately, secure implementations of distance-bounding require dedicated ultra-wideband hardware that only provide low data rates and operate at relatively short distances. Our works looks at novel symmetric-key challenge-response protocols that can detect either a decode-and forward relay attack or prevent a decode-and-forward and detect an amplify-and-forward relay attack. The protocols utilize the channel state information in to perform the detection. The protocols utilize orthogonal frequency division multiplexing to estimate the channel frequency response between the legitimate communicating parties to identify if a relay attack is occurring in a physical-layer challenge-response authentication protocol. The proposed protocols can be leveraged on many existing hardware platforms and can simultaneously support high data rates. To evaluate the performance of the protocol, hardware implementations are done, as well as software simulations to gather Monte-Carlo results on performance criterion.